Jethro Tull's Aqualung [Paperback]

The author, the head of the Department of Music of Surrey, is both knowledgable of music, Jethro Tull and of the era in which Aqualung was created. For me, it was a true joy to read this -albeit too short- book. The music and lyrics are discussed with the same seriousness one might expect in reading about a significant symphony.

Reading this book sent me into a Jethro Tull whirlpool. While reading the book I listened to Aqualung non-stop, and the song in particular. The author, Allan F. Moore, wrote a bit too high brow for the subject matter, but I suppose he did that to give the album literary credibility, or perhaps that is the only manner in which he knows to write. Nonetheless, it is a great and fun read. In fact, it made me want to read more of the series, something I have yet to do. In Aqualung, Moore dissects each and every song, and spends a great deal of time writing about "Aqualung" and "My God." He also divides the album in halves by its original lp sides, and discusses them as separate themes, something I'd toyed with when listening to the album in the early seventies, but never could delineate such as Moore did. I found myself wanting to listen to each song as I read about it, and try to get a good grip about the themes he discussed. Sometimes I agreed, sometimes I thought he was a bit adrift. At slightly over 100 pages, it went fast and since I had great interest in the topic, it went particularly fast for me. It works well to listen to the album first, then read the book all the way through, then read it and listen to each song as he discusses them.

How can you write a book length treatise about a landmark album like "Aqualung," and never mention two members of a five-person band (Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond and Clive Bunker) while doing so?

Answer: by treating the recording as if it exists in an intellectual vacuum, and was not crafted by real, sweaty, spontaneous human beings, who often do their best work by gut or accident, not in response to some over-arching creative construct.

While well researched and referenced, I suppose, (there certainly are a lot of footnotes anyway), this book sucks the lifeblood and soul out of a visceral album by chopping it into the littlest bits possible, then analyzing those bits and creating a new whole out of them that bears no recognizable resemblance to the original (now deceased) beast.

Anyone who has ever written a song will recognize that the connections made here between words, meaning and chords are ludicrous in practice, and could only have been fabricated and applied after the fact.

The most egregious offense in this book, however, is in the author's creation of a character being portrayed by singer-songwriter Ian Anderson through the bulk of the album's first side, a character that the author names (cringe!!!) "Jethro." That's laughable bordering on pitiful.

While I agree with the author that everyone is entitled to their own opinions and interpretations of a work of art, it's galling that this particular one, seven standard deviations removed what most folks might experience while listening to "Aqualung," is the one that is preserved in perpetuity in book form.

People who have any emotional response to the music of Jethro Tull, the songs of Ian Anderson, and the other musicians who have brought them to life over the years, are highly unlikely to connect with the pretentious twaddle offered in this book.

And I say that as a music critic, with an extremely high tolerance for such stuff . . .